


clear eyes (baby, i can read you like a map)

by girl0nfire



Series: we burn in dreams [1]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers - All Fandoms
Genre: Angsty Schmoop, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-24
Updated: 2012-09-24
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:47:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl0nfire/pseuds/girl0nfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Falling in love with Tony Stark didn't just happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	clear eyes (baby, i can read you like a map)

Later, you’ll look back and wonder how you crested this hill, how you didn’t just stand at the bottom and gape at the height, at the climb, and simply give up.

And you’ll realize that it wasn’t a climb; it was a thousand single steps, some forward, a few back, but always moving. Always moving, but never predictable. Running and skipping and trudging and dragging, sometimes.

A thousand steps away from darkness and ice and a thousand steps toward the setting sun.

That’s what falling in love with Tony Stark is like.

You’ll look back at your route, tracing your footsteps like dots on a map and you’ll be able to press a finger down and say, _there_.

A thousand steps interspersed with ten thousand landmarks, kisses and touches and harsh words and broken promises. Sometimes, when you look back, dragging your fingertip across the map you’ve written, you’ll see where you built monuments.

The first time he looked at you with nothing but fondness; the first time you held him without any tremble of fear.

You’ll see, too, the times you built walls. Some are short, but others meander along your route, diverting your course and forcing you to still your climb. You’ll remember them, too, point them out to him from your vantage point on top of the hill and you’ll both sigh, remembering how easy they were to build with two hands but how hard they were to tear down with four.

There are grave markers along the road; some for people, but some for things that you both lost. Things you had to leave behind and bury so that you could move forward; things you still visit, sometimes, when you’re alone. Things you thought were dear, and maybe they still are, but things that stood in your way nonetheless.

Your hands will still on the map, sometimes, and your memories will take over, the thousand shards crystallizing into quiet, tiny mirrors for you both to look into and beyond.

A thousand footsteps crowned with a million moments, some blissful and some leaden dark, all of them swirling around you and between you, making up the cords that tie you together as you complete your journey, binding you together in the effort.

Sometimes the dark ones take over; they smear grey across the sky, blotting out the light that’s leading your way and you stumble. 

Nights where neither of you could be bothered to come home. The first time he told you about Howard. The first time you told him about James.

But the white-hot bliss seems to find you best in those times, nearly singing your skin with its brightness and pulling you out, setting you back on your path. Lighting your way again, settling in your chest and wrapping around your ribs with a deep warmth you’ve come to associate with his crooked smiles.

You’ll close your eyes, then, and recall the feel of his shoulders under your hands, the scrape of his beard against your neck. You’ll close your eyes and the light will burn the silhouettes behind your eyelids like celluloid; photonegatives of memories that you’ll never be able to forget.

Not that you’ll want to.

And now that you’ve summited, now that you’ve reached the top, you find that your journey as just begun. That a thousand mornings of remembering just how he takes his coffee and a thousand nights of him whispering into your hair when you wake up shivering only made up the journey.

You both spent so much time worried; fretting about what it’s like to be in love, if you’d know it when you got there or if it was a slow thing, taking its time.

And as you run your fingers across the maps you’ve drawn, the one that you revisit often or the one you trace along his skin in the quiet moments between your breaths, you’ll remember all of the monuments and walls and gravestones and brilliant-white memories and you’ll smile.

Falling in love with Tony Stark didn’t happen all at once.

It didn’t _happen_ at all… it took root under your feet as you climbed, curling upward and around your body until it settled in your chest. It grew within you, between you, until neither of you could deny it any longer. 

Until both of you realized that while you spent so much time worrying about falling in love it was happening to you. All the time you spent counting minutes and tearing down walls and gripping each other fiercely, all the time you spent watching for love, all that time you were working your way toward it.

And when you crest the hill, you look down at your fingers tangled with his and you know then that while you were out looking for it, love found you first.


End file.
